As collectors and creators, we gain a different perspective of what constitutes “good.” Not as a new creator, but one that has been doing it for a while. We stop seeing what's “good”, especially in respect to our own work, but we start to see the dip in quality in what we buy, as well.

I'm in the process of going through my comics, looking at each one individually. This is a collection that's over thirty years in the making, and looking at most of the covers, I can't tell you why I bought the comic except as a habit.

That isn't true for all of the comics, though. Some things are being kept because I love the character: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Daredevil. Most of the X-Men, though, aren't staying in my collection. Most DC books aren't staying in my collection. Most Image books are going, too. I'm keeping the Milestone comics, as well as milestone issues of comics.

My criteria are pretty simple: if I don't care much about the character, and I can't tell what's going on from the cover, then it's going to be culled. And there are a lot of comics that need to be culled.

How many comics have you read that either connected with you, or left you totally breathless when you got to the end? How many comics have left you as “meh”, and have done so for years?

This is when the distinction between collector and completest comes to the fore. When your collection becomes unwieldy, it becomes time to decide if you're going to get rid of things or let it take more space in your life.

I decided to get rid of the clutter.

(As a side note, I'm not big on digital comics. I like to actually own things. At least with physical comics, I can sell them and get something of what I paid back. You can't do that with digital. Even though I'm culling my collection, I don't mind the space requirements overmuch.)